The
work contained on the following pages is the property and copyright of Wizards
of the Coast\TSR inc. and is quotted directly from their site. It has
been formatted for viewing on this site by the Scribes of Candlekeep.
The article is available for viewing in its original state from the Forgotten
Realms Features page on the WotC site: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/main.asp?x=fr/features,3.

Elminster
Speaks - Part 30

By Ed Greenwood

Endgame at the Wizard

The Whistling Wizard, Continued(Fair/Cheap)

And so the Battle at the Bar began -- and spread swiftly from end to end of
the Whistling Wizard, causing Zarracee to race from chamber to chamber shouting
warnings to Harpers, and the inn to come within a skin's thickness of vanishing
in one of the explosions Voonlarrens are so eager to describe and attribute
as every-other-day occurrences at the Wizard. While spells shook and flashed
in the common room, reducing windows, doors, and furniture to splintered shards,
warriors with drawn swords hacked and shouted up and down the inn stairs and
passages, spilling even into the cookhouse -- where the doppelgangers, thinking
they'd been discovered, joined the fray, posing as the most fearsome folk they
could think of: Zhentarim wizards. The sight of them caused the Knights to attack
in earnest, and both the ogre mage and the illithid archmage to plunge into
battle, causing the unintentional gutting (and subsequent renovation) of several
upper rooms of the Wizard.

In the common room, several magic mouth spells that had been cast on the bar
as waiting messages by various Harpers reacted with the preservative and fire-retardant
spells also laid on it, and the wild combinations of overlapping battle spells
that were washing over it, by erupting in an explosion that killed Ravvas, Arlo
Randulkyn, and Tharath Shemmer. The explosion also removed the ceiling above
the bar, causing the room above to collapse down into the common room. In the
fall, the ogre mage Gathkatra tumbled down to death by impalement on the wreckage,
and the illithid mage was caught in midtransformation into another shape, its
magical abilities ended forever by extensive brain damage. Wailing, it fled
into the forest.

The Master-of-Moons, who'd used a spell to grow several additional arms and
used all of them enthusiastically to stab the Simbul, now collapsed into weeping
and pleaded with her for mercy. When she reluctantly granted it (with half a
dozen enchanted daggers still buried hilt-deep in her breast), he triumphantly
cast a spell that made all of the daggers explode, rending the upper half of
her body. Storm promptly beheaded him, and the Harpers and the Simbul's apprentices
rushed to aid the stricken queen -- as several of the Bron's deputies arrived
with weapons at the ready, demanding to know what had happened and accompanied
by local citizens who'd come to gawk.

Contingent spells and spell effects snatched the magical aid the Queen of Aglarond
needed to her from elsewhere: a sphere of healing fluid that she dove into,
and once immersed, was healed in moments. The remaining Tarntar fled during
the confusion.

One of the deputies made the mistake of trying to disarm and issue commands
to one of the Simbul's apprentices. She used spells to send the man flying back
down the road to the Throat, bouncing painfully once or twice. That precipitated
a general Harper attack on the remaining Voonlarren authorities, who hastily
withdrew from the Wizard -- followed shortly thereafter by the contrite Harper
attackers. Before she left, Storm did present the senior surviving inn staffer,
a grizzled old tapster by the name of Avlar (who still tends the bar to this
day), with gold and gems enough to pay for repairs.